


Exotic

by beautifultoastdream



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Cultural Differences, Dorian is valiantly restraining his commentary, F/M, Fluff, Gen, Gossip, Humor, Sera Being Sera, Teasing, Wicked Grace, a bit cracky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-23
Updated: 2016-04-23
Packaged: 2018-06-03 23:41:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6631804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beautifultoastdream/pseuds/beautifultoastdream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Bet your gods are right fed up with you by now. Good morning, you, oh look, that’s a human in bed with you again, didn’t the last time we smited you with horrible bad luck and spiders do anything to convince you? Bad elf! No biscuit!"</p>
<p>Sera has trouble understanding the Inquisitor's choice of romantic partners. Teasing and TMI ensue, and one poor Rogue may soon regret she asked ...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Exotic

**Author's Note:**

> I really, really enjoy writing third-party POVs on romantic relationships. And embarrassing my Inquisitor.
> 
> I don't use Sera much in-game, so I may not have her voice down, but I do like her as a character. Her perspective versus my Inquisitor, a mage Lavellan, makes for some interesting contrasts. And rude bickering.

The Herald’s Rest was noisier than usual. Maybe it was the exhaustion caused by heavier duties, or maybe it was the lingering sheer relief of surviving the battle at Adamant Fortress, but the ale was flowing freely and every table was crowded. Several of Bull’s Chargers were busily destroying the dartboard with an impromptu knife-throwing competition (Krem was winning), Maryden had discarded the soft ballads in favor of raucous, crowd-pleasing dance tunes, and the smell of fresh stew and warm bread mingled with the ever-present Skyhold aromas of smoke and cold clean snow every time the door swung open. It was a good night.

Over in one corner on the first floor, five companions were finishing up a casual hand of Wicked Grace. With no Lady Montilyet to sweep the game and no Iron Bull demanding high bets, they played with small stakes and relaxed rules. Three of them had only just returned from slogging through the mess that was Emprise du Lion, and the card game was as much an excuse to catch up as to win.

Or to do other things. Sera had been forced to fold early in the round and was entertaining herself with one of her favorite sports: Bait the Inquisitor.

The two women had a strange relationship. They shared a fondness for pranks (as the now-notorious bucket incident attested), but in most other respects Inquisitor Aholibah Lavellan and Sera were true opposites. Sera’s dislike of magical weirdness and “elfy” elves meant they were already off to a bad start, and the Inquisitor’s growing power made Sera—solidly on the side of the underclass—uncomfortable. For her part, the lady Lavellan enjoyed the jokes but reacted poorly to jabs against the Dalish or the elven gods, and Sera was never one to avoid a sore spot she could be poking at. Put it all together, and their friendship could run somewhat vitriolic.

Especially when Sera had fresh ammunition. Ammunition named Cullen Rutherford.

“All I’m sayin’ is it’s not right, is it?” Sera continued happily. She was well into her third mug of ale and couldn’t have stopped if the Maker himself came down to tell her to zip it. “A _real_ elf and one of them awful awful awful awful humans. ‘Cause of Exalted Marches and shite. Ancestors rollin’ in their graves and gods getting great big frowny god faces and all.”

“Please stop,” Lavellan muttered. She pulled two cards out of her hand and slid them across the table to Blackwall, who dealt her two more and tried very hard not to look like he was about to laugh.

“Do you have to, like, do penance? Sacrifice a halla every time you get him off?”

“Sera!” The Inquisitor’s ears were turning pink. “Please!”

Sera grinned, lounging back in her chair and crossing her legs. That was one big thing about the Dalish she didn’t agree with: their attitudes towards the funnest parts of life. Pranking and boozing and screwing all seemed to get their arses tighter than a … thing that was really tight. The Inquisitor had described marriages arranged by families, exchanges of dowries, gifts given to prove skill and shite like that. Sure, Dalish young probably did their share of sneaking off into the bushes when they got the chance, but Sera’d bet it was a lot harder (heh) to do with everyone in wagons and a bunch of gloomy gods watching you.

“You do, don’t you,” she continued relentlessly. The blush was spreading to the Inquisitor’s cheeks as she hunched in her chair, trying to look like she was just shielding her cards from casual observation. “Bet your gods are right fed up with you by now. Good morning, you, oh look, that’s a human in bed with you _again,_ didn’t the last time we smited you with horrible bad luck and spiders do anything to convince you? You couldn’t at least pick a human without a massive Chantry stick up his arse and no sense of fun? Bad elf! No biscuit!”

“Now that’s unfair,” Dorian observed mildly from the other side of the table. “Commander Cullen is quite capable of relaxation. We’ve played chess a few times, and he even got sassy about it.”

Sera rolled her eyes. “Oh, right, chess. Because that’s fun. Yeah. Little wooden people on a board doing nothing but what you tell 'em. Must be a nice change from telling little fleshy people what to do, yeah? Wood can’t talk back.”

“Not always,” Cole observed. The spirit’s grasp on the rules of Wicked Grace were still hazy, but considering the amount of rampant cheating that went on in the average Skyhold game, nobody really cared. His own eyes were fixed on his cards, but he had clearly been listening. “No voice, but talking like sparks. Life reaches out. Fire, frost, fury.”

“No one asked you,” Sera told him. “And sorry, 'Vinty, chess is _not_ fun. You just managed to make her boyfriend look even _more_ uptight.”

Dorian raised an eyebrow and reshuffled his own cards. “Far be it from me to question your failures of perception, but chess is indeed fun. And perhaps you should be quiet. If you make our dear Inquisitor any redder, we’ll have to check her for lyrium.”

“I’m not red!” the Inquisitor lied. “But I am folding. _Dirthara-ma,_ you pieces of junk.” She dropped her cards and pushed them aside before taking another drink from her mug.

“And there’s the elf thing again,” Sera commented idly. “Sacrifice another halla if you swear in Trade tongue, right?”

“We don’t sacrifice halla,” the Inquisitor retorted. “Ever. And if I only swore in Trade, it’d cut down on the number of things I could swear about, wouldn’t it? These days I need all the bad language I can get my hands on.”

Sera laughed. “Now that I can drink to, yeah?”

The women clinked their mugs and drank. A few more swallows of ale chased the embarrassment off the Inquisitor’s face and leveled Sera’s temper a little. A new hand was dealt, and both women and Cole quickly folded, leaving Dorian and Blackwall going head-to-head for the pot.

Which meant Sera had nothing to distract her again. Except the Inquisitor.

“Seriously, though,” she said, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “Couldn’t try a little harder not to get with him? He’s so … _blech.”_

“I don’t think I know that word,” the Inquisitor said. “Clearly my Trade needs work. Dorian? What does 'blech’ mean?”

“It means 'Not now, my dear lady, the Warden is going to lose.'” Dorian placed his cards on the table face-down and rapped his knuckles on the wood. “I see your bet, serah, and raise you another five coppers.”

“Blech means _blech,”_ Sera clarified. “Yuck. Icky. Blah. Ew. All stiff and stuck-up and serious. Like, Mister Perfect Templar. Probably says the Chant of Light before you pull his britches down. How does that even work? An elfy elf and a templary human? What?”

“Well …” The Inquisitor bit her lip, coloring again. “He’s a good man. Smart, practical, sweet—“

“ _Blech, blech, blech.”_

“–but I suppose it doesn’t hurt that he’s so exotic.”

_“_ _Bl—_ what?”

The Inquisitor was turning red again, but she made a few vague gestures with her hands. “Exotic! All humans are, really, but he’s the most _human_ human I’ve ever met. Just so different.”

Dorian stifled a laugh, and Blackwall took the opportunity to filch two of his coppers. Cole was staring vaguely at the two women from under his hat.

Sera, though, blinked. “D'you mean you have a human fetish?”

“No! Don’t be ridiculous. It's not like I grew up dreaming about humans or anything! I mean, if I was going to marry, it'd be an elf. And there's a bad history between our peoples, of course." The Inquisitor’s blush was deepening. “But there are good humans, and they're not at all like elves. I suppose it’s … well … attractively unusual.”

“Ewwww.” Sera stuck out her tongue. “You are so weird.”

“Well, you asked!” The Inquisitor was grinning dreamily through her blush. Dorian’s efforts to keep down his laughter were failing. “His voice. And his eyes—we don’t get that color in the clans much. And the _shoulders._ Elves never have shoulders like that. Everything about him is just so _big.”_

Dorian’s face was buried in his hands, shoulders shaking helplessly. Blackwall calmly lifted another copper.

“Too much information!” Sera yelped. “Did not need to imagine that, did not need to imagine that, excuse me, need way more ale now thank you very much!” She shot out of her seat, mug in hand, and tripped over Cole’s foot. There was a crash and a squeal as she went headlong into the next table, where half a dozen off-duty Templars were well into their eighth bottle of wine and not in the mood to have a horrified elf knocking their glasses over.

The card game was adjourned in favor of chaos.


End file.
